Adventures in Africa: Throwback to the 1800's sewing machines...

7/14

Happy Bastille Day! Oh wait. that’s France... Anyway, this morning started off with a firm discussion between myself and ole’ Gilbert (the head of the gym.) I stated that I refuse to keep getting up this early to come and work out if he wasn’t going to open the gym or was 30 minutes late. I told him that Uganda time wouldn’t be acceptable. He laughed, then assured me that he would be there to open it. Today was a success but we’ll see tomorrow! :) After that, I got into work, went for my first supermarket run by myself, large African tea in hand, for some last minute materials. Let me tell you, if you want to make some serious dough in this country open up a store that sells only duct tape and 1 inch wide masking tape! It doesn’t exist in most places, and if it does it’s ridiculously expensive even for American standards!

We started off the day with the women and one man coming into the office. There are two women who are unable to walk at all so we set up some spots for them on the ground with their own sewing machines and ironing boards. There were two more who were crippled, one was deaf and two women with babies (one who was screaming the whole time because she didn’t feel well.) We had very low expectations for the class starting off. After we got the new/ancient Singer machines set up, we began with having them do a french seam and flat felled seam. Major success! After lunch we decided to split them into 3 groups. I taught a class on how to make a special bag to 3 women. They ended up catching on extremely quickly. By the end they were laughing and beaming ear to ear. We had such a great day; time truly flies by when you’re having fun!

Side note: The baby that was there today had tiny wooden sticks in her earlobes that looked like earrings. I had heard about this but never saw it. It’s for protection from child sacrifice; they won’t be abducted because they are now imperfect. I can’t believe that still happens!